On July 8, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld Kentucky’s definition of a qualified political party, which is a group that got 2% of the presidential vote within Kentucky in the previous presidential election. The 18-page decision in Libertarian Party of Kentucky v Grimes, e.d., 3:15cv-86, does not even discuss another aspect of the law that the plaintiffs complained about, namely that if an unqualified party wants to run a full slate of candidates for statewide state office, it must submit a separate petition for each of the 9 offices. The decision does not mention the evidence that a new party would need hundreds of thousands of signatures on multiple petitions if it wanted to run for all federal and state office. The other plaintiff in the case besides the Libertarian Party is the Constitution Party.

The only state interest identified by the decision is the need to “prevent voter confusion, avoid ballot overcrowding, and prevent frivolous candidates.” This is boiler-plate language from past unfavorable ballot access decisions.

California held a presidential primary for six parties on June 7, including the American Independent Party. None of the seven candidates whose names were printed on the AIP ballot were well-known. It is now been determined that approximately two-thirds of the voters who used an AIP ballot wrote in someone for president, instead of voting for any of the listed candidates.

Amador County election officials kindly made the write-ins available, even though there were no declared write-in presidential candidates in the AIP primary. Donald Trump received the most write-in votes, and polled substantially more votes than anyone listed on the ballot. Bernie Sanders received the 2nd highest number of votes, and Hillary Clinton received the third highest. Thanks to Mark Seidenberg for this news.